The lights in the studio were dimmed just enough to make the atmosphere feel intimate, like a conversation between old friends rather than a televised interview for a national audience.
Werner Klemperer sat there, leaning back in the plush velvet chair, looking every bit the sophisticated, cultured intellectual he truly was in his private life.
There was no monocle tonight. There was no stiff, high-collared uniform or the perpetually polished boots of a Luftwaffe officer.
Just a man who had lived a hundred lives—including a narrow escape from the rise of the Nazi regime as a young man—before he ever stepped onto the set of Stalag 13.
The interviewer leaned forward, a mischievous glint in his eye, and asked the question that Werner had probably heard in every city from New York to Berlin.
“Werner, did the character of Colonel Klink ever follow you home? Or worse, did he ever follow you into your very serious private life as a classical musician?”
Werner let out a soft, melodic laugh that carried the weight of decades of irony. He adjusted his glasses—real ones this time—and nodded slowly as the memory surfaced.
“You have no idea how much of a shadow that man cast,” he began, his voice carrying that rich, baritone tone that was a far cry from Klink’s shrill, panicked nasal whine.
“I remember one evening specifically. It was shortly after the show had really taken off in the ratings, and I was attending a very formal, very serious gala for the New York Philharmonic.”
“My father, Otto, was a man of immense gravity and musical stature. I was there to represent the family name, to be the ‘serious’ Klemperer among the maestros and the donors.”
“I was standing near the buffet, holding a glass of very expensive champagne, trying to discuss the nuances of Mahler’s Ninth with a group of rather stiff, high-society patrons.”
“I felt a presence behind me. You know that feeling when someone is staring at the back of your neck with such intensity that it almost feels like physical heat?”
“I turned around, and there was this man. He wasn’t in a tuxedo like everyone else. He looked like he had wandered in from a completely different world, perhaps a local garage or a quiet suburban home.”
“He was staring at my face, specifically at my right eye, with a look of pure, unadulterated expectation that made the socialites around me go quiet.”
“He started walking toward me, pushing past a very confused woman in a silk gown, and he didn’t look like he wanted an autograph or a polite handshake.”
“He looked like he was about to deliver a military report that would determine the fate of the entire Western Front.”
“Then he did something that stopped the entire room cold.”
The man didn’t say a word at first. He just stood there, about three feet away from me, and suddenly snapped his heels together with a crack that sounded like a pistol shot in that quiet, echoing marble hall.
He threw his hand up in a mocking, overly-dramatic salute and shouted at the top of his lungs, “HEIL KLINK!”
You have to understand the setting. This was a room full of the most prestigious musical minds and wealthy donors in New York, many of whom took themselves very, very seriously.
Half of the people in the room were probably horrified, and the other half were just utterly confused, wondering if a performance artist had breached the security of the gala.
My first instinct, the one born of my years of living as a refugee and then a serious dramatic actor, was to be mortified. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole so I wouldn’t have to explain this to my father’s peers.
But then, I saw the man’s eyes. He wasn’t a fanatic; he was a fan. He had this wide, goofy grin on his face, and he was practically vibrating with the excitement of finally seeing his favorite bumbling commandant in the flesh.
The silence in the room was deafening. I could see the security guards starting to move toward us from the corners of the hall, their hands already reaching for the man’s arms.
I knew I had to do something to diffuse the tension immediately, or this poor fellow was going to be tackled to the ground in the middle of a Mozart tribute.
So, I did the only thing I could do. I leaned into the absurdity of the life I had chosen.
I didn’t have the monocle with me, of course. I never wore the thing in real life. But I had spent years training the orbicularis oculi muscles around my right eye so I could hold that piece of glass without a string.
It was always a point of pride for me on set. Most actors needed a hidden wire or a piece of sticky tape to keep a monocle in place. Not me. I had mastered the “Klink squint” through sheer facial discipline.
I set down my champagne glass on a passing waiter’s tray—without even looking at the poor boy—and I straightened my spine until I was as rigid as a board.
I narrowed my right eye, tensing those specific muscles until the skin puckered exactly the way it did on camera when Klink was about to have a nervous breakdown.
I tilted my head back, looked down my nose at the man with a look of supreme arrogance, and let out that sharp, indignant bark that had become my trademark.
“SCHULTZ! Why is this man standing here? Why aren’t the dogs out? DISMISSED!”
The transformation was instantaneous. The “serious” Werner Klemperer vanished, and for five glorious seconds, the commandant of Stalag 13 was standing in the middle of the New York Philharmonic gala.
The man who had saluted me nearly fell over from the shock of it. He started laughing so hard he had to grab onto a nearby marble pedestal for support.
And then, the most amazing thing happened. The rest of the room—the stiff patrons, the serious musicians, the socialites who hadn’t cracked a smile all night—they all realized what was happening.
The tension broke like a crashing wave. A roar of laughter went up through the hall that probably could have been heard in the nosebleed seats of the opera house next door.
The security guards stopped in their tracks, looking at each other and smiling. Even the waiter who was holding my abandoned champagne started chuckling.
I spent the next forty-five minutes not talking about Mahler or my father’s conducting techniques, but explaining to a circle of wealthy donors how I kept that monocle in my eye during the more physical comedy scenes.
I told them the secret I usually kept for the crew: it’s all in the cheekbone. If you tensed the lower lid just right, the glass stayed put even if Bob Crane was jumping up and down in front of you or a prop door slammed in your face.
The fan who started it all was so delighted that he actually stayed for the entire gala and bought an expensive lithograph at the charity auction later that night just to impress me.
When I finally got home and spoke to my father, he asked me with his usual sternness how the evening of high culture had gone.
I told him, “Father, I think I’ve finally found a way to bring the masses to the opera. I just have to threaten to send them all to the Eastern Front.”
He didn’t find it quite as funny as I did, but he couldn’t deny that people were finally paying attention to a Klemperer for a completely different, and perhaps more joyful, reason.
That was the beauty of Hogan’s Heroes. We were taking this dark, terrible period of history and turning the villains into such utter buffoons that even a high-society gala couldn’t resist the joke.
It was a small moment, just a few seconds of character work in a tuxedo, but it reminded me that the show had a reach far beyond the television screen.
It didn’t matter if you were a blue-collar worker or a billionaire donor; everyone wanted to see the Colonel lose his cool just one more time.
And honestly? I think my cheek muscles still remember exactly how to hold that invisible monocle.
It’s a specialized skill that serves absolutely no purpose in real life, except to make a stranger’s day at a party.
And in the end, that’s not such a bad legacy for an actor to have, is it?
Sometimes the best way to handle a ridiculous situation is to become the most ridiculous person in the room.
Have you ever been recognized as someone you’re definitely not?
